Twitter suspends alt-right figureheads

I can only see this as furthering the echo chamber that caused many to be so blindsided by Trumps victory.<p>I would like to see specifically why these people were suspended. If they&#x27;re engaged in harassment obviously the suspension should hold up. If it really is just mass reporting for political speech (I&#x27;ve had friends msging &#x27;targets&#x27; for reporting purely for them admitting to voting for Trump), I can only see it as a bad trend.<p>These people don&#x27;t go away just because you ban them from your favourite sites. They just disappear from your own view, and go away to a more insular community, more of an echo chamber, where they become more radical.

Although Twitter obviously has the right to do this, legally, I don&#x27;t think it is good.<p>Twitter is esentially a public infrastructure for real-time communication. We have public officials from countries all over the world that use Twitter to communicate to their citizens.<p>For that (and similar) reasons, I would strongly prefer if Twitter didn&#x27;t go around policing what types of political opions are okay and aren&#x27;t. Even if you really hate the people that Twitter bans, imagine if things were the other way around, and they started banning very liberal users.

118 points in 1 hour, page 3 of HN? This story is writing itself.<p>The alt-right is not a small number of people. 50 million went to the polls and voted for Trump. And with things like this, you&#x27;re giving them ammunition. You just told 50 million people that their views are not accepted in society. You just told the electoral majority that they are not allowed in one of the most common forums for political discourse.<p>It&#x27;s not a good thing. The nation is deeply divided, and the actions of the liberals are giving the alt-right more strength. Tactics like this only work if you apply them to small groups, and even then it only works if the vast majority are not sympathetic to the cause.<p>That&#x27;s not the situation in America. You are covering your ears and telling the bully he doesn&#x27;t matter, and that he&#x27;s not allowed to play with you. Except you&#x27;re telling that to half the classroom, not just one bully. And you&#x27;ve got control of the soccer field, and most of the balls. You&#x27;ve become the bully. And you&#x27;ve given the rest of the class a lot of ammunition to dislike you.

Why does the alt-right have issues with them being banned from systems, but don&#x27;t see issues with themselves banning others from systems.<p>For example, Twitter bans them from using Twitter, but the &#x2F;r&#x2F;The_Donald echo chamber bans anyone with a counter view to their own.<p>If you want freedom to speak on certain platforms, you need to provide the same rights to everyone.

I&#x27;m not sure I agree with this. I think I&#x27;d rather have people with extreme opinions talking in the public where they are subject to counter arguments than somewhere less public where their message goes unchallenged.

Doesn&#x27;t Twitter allow actual terrorists to post?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;amp.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2016&#x2F;jun&#x2F;17&#x2F;islamic-state-twitter-accounts-rainbow-makeover-anonymous-hackers?client=safari" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;amp.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;...</a>

In other words, Twitter gives the <i>Information They Don&#x27;t Want You To Know badge</i> to a group that already thrives on such framing <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12961185" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12961185</a>

Unless there were specific examples of breaking Twitter&#x27;s terms and conditions from each individual, this does nothing but popularises alt right. Even then, the way they did it, just plays into alt right narrative. I don&#x27;t how is this benefitial

Painting insults and threats and bullying as legitimate criticism is the main rhetorical fallacy of the alt-right movement. They have a guarantee of free speech in this country but they do not have a guarantee of Twitter access.

Why does everything that Twitter does feel so ham-fisted.

People love having their speech limited, I&#x27;m sure this will work out <i>great</i> for twitter.

&quot;Twitter finally bans accounts partaking in persistent abuse and harassment&quot;<p>This isnt a freedom of speech &#x2F; diversity of thought issue, these people are abusing others. Frankly I would prefer the police got involved and hate crimes and threats were taken seriously, but while late at least twitter are doing the right thing.

The comments here are extremely disheartening. It appears that the HN community values hate speech and harassment over &quot;free speech&quot; on a privately owned platform. I applaud Twitter for making itself a safer space for marginalized groups with this step even if it is very little, very late.<p>Edit: it is with heavy heart that I must say that I am EXTREMELY depressed by the amount of white racism denial I am seeing in the comments here. The hacker news community is demonstrating to me an extreme aversion to understanding or deconstructing racism in this country and is satisfied with endlessly repeating ancient defenses against racism under the package of feeling oppressed because marginalized groups of people are finally speaking out against their oppression.

People with different views need to be listened to and debated with rather than silenced. this newspaper article from a BBC journalist is quite thought provoking <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irishtimes.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;journalists-are-helping-to-create-a-dangerous-consensus-1.2868638" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irishtimes.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;journalists-are-helping-to...</a>

As much as I disagree with the views of the &quot;alt-right&quot; (why not call them far right by the way?), I can&#x27;t help but be astounded that we&#x27;ve opened that can of worms? Who got to decide who should be banned? Isn&#x27;t Twitter basically free speech? Why are we even drawing lines to begin with? As soon as you do that, someone else with a different world view will start banning the accounts of transgenders, community organizers, since we&#x27;re now basing our judgment of Twitter accounts on subjective criteria.<p>People have a right to follow&#x2F;unfollow accounts and we should leave it at that.

Out of place but I want to hear American HN regulars opinon;<p>Is this provacation or utter lack of self awareness as it i will only play into Trumps hand?

Next time, MSM can honestly claim they didn&#x27;t see it coming.

It&#x27;s sad how what&#x27;s supposed to be an open and democratic platform, isn&#x27;t.

little meta - HN is not the best place to have these discussions. the way voting works here, everything is too conformist, too sugarcoated, and most importantly, downvotes are regularly handed out (at least in such emotional discussions as political discussions are wont to be) according to the political views of the high-karma elites, and more particularly according to their lack of moral self-control (i.e. many will not &quot;abuse&quot; downvotes like that, but that then just gives more power to those doing it).<p>is it OK to assume that, among the people with high enough karma to cast downvotes, the distribution of political views equals that of the general commenting population? or, better question - does that even matter? i don&#x27;t know, is it even possible to achieve some kind of crowd-sourced moderation without exposing the system to the risk of gangs of idealists attacking dissenters with downvotes?

I think the musician Jarvis Cocker explained this best in his song, &quot;Running the World.&quot; Particularly the lines, &quot;In theory, I respect your right to exist, I will kill you if you move in next to me.&quot;<p>People love to free speech, except when it involves supporting all the things they don&#x27;t like. For the record, I don&#x27;t love any extremes and certainly not the alt-right, but censorship is worse. It is never justified, under any circumstances.<p>If you don&#x27;t like something, don&#x27;t listen. People are and can be protected plenty of other ways, for example by laws against murder. The law anywhere isn&#x27;t perfect, but censorship is even less so.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xRGGbyZzuTg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xRGGbyZzuTg</a>

Actually this matches NPI&#x27;s policy too, guess they can&#x27;t complain:<p>&gt;&quot;NPI will, however, exclude those who show reckless disregard with the media, or those who&#x27;ve made morally indefensible public statements. Such people make our movement look bad. We choose not to grant them a platform. It’s as simple as that.&quot;<p>Source: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npiamerica.org&#x2F;the-national-policy-institute&#x2F;category&#x2F;the-rainbow-coalition" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npiamerica.org&#x2F;the-national-policy-institute&#x2F;cate...</a>

This will end badly.

To all those concerned, they were not suspended for being racist. They were suspended for trying to silence people they disagreed with via targeted harassment. If you do that, you might get banned, regardless of your political alignment. There are PLENTY of white supremacists who are doing just fine on twitter. According to twitter you are free to spread your shitty ideology as long as you don&#x27;t actively prevent people from spreading theirs.

It seems Twitter just follow some political will from left&#x2F;liberal camp. &quot;Freedom of speech&quot; and &quot;democracy&quot; we all know and love.

As I think this is important considering all the discussion so far I feel justified in guiding people to the Ask HN [0] I have just posted. Welcome all feedback<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12967873" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12967873</a>

Not only do I not see a problem with this, but I don&#x27;t think Twitter went anywhere near far enough. They should have suspended Trump&#x27;s account well over a year ago.

Good.

How has the media STILL not realized that the &quot;alt-right&quot; is primarily composed of self-proclaimed &quot;shit posters&quot; and forum trolls who enjoy posting provocative things to get a rise out of the over-sensitive PC police and social justice warriors? They refer to this election as The Great Meme War, and their &quot;leader&quot; (aside from Trump himself) is a poorly drawn cartoon frog.<p>Those weren&#x27;t red flags to whatever gullible stooge wrote this story? This is &quot;The Hacker Known as 4Chan&quot; all over again: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=pVhn_tdF3eo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=pVhn_tdF3eo</a>

What about the tens of thousands of accounts belonging to islamists cheering about killing non-muslims and preaching hate all day?

Great job, Twitter! Now you can go back to promoting the jihadi profiles at the fullest.

Twitter is a (going bankrupt) common carrier. Lawsuits?

I&#x27;m going to sell my Twitter stock. They are making one mistake after the other. Do they understand how free speech works? Can they enable that on Twitter?

How about suspending people who openly advocate genocide? #killallmen

How will this help Twitter turn a profit?

Yet another reason why Twitter will ultimately fail. Censorship of whoever you think are nefarious characters when purported &quot;victims&quot; can easily just block people is just plain silly. We already know there are block list services that will autoblock. So if anyone is getting trouble from troll &#x2F; enemies or want to be their own echo chamber, it&#x27;s easy to do all this stuff. Bye Twitter, hello Minds &amp; Gab.

Media is trying to control the narrative of the Trump victory... Filter-Bubble, Alt-Right, Fake-News Anything but the truth

There&#x27;s actually a decent canary to determine whether this is the opening salvo of a purge.<p>If Twitter bans @ScottAdamsSays - whom some have called a Trump apologist but who doesn&#x27;t seem overtly racist - then we&#x27;ll know the purge is on.

Good.<p>Twitter has a legal and ethical responsibility to not allow their platform to promote vile racism, sexism, Islamophobia, etc. No one owes anyone a platform to spew their hatred.<p>If the bigots don&#x27;t like it no one is stopping them from getting their own websites.

&gt;A cartoon of Pepe the frog is a commonly used symbol of the alt right<p>So basically a witch hunt where they&#x27;re finding &quot;problematic&quot; people and removing their opinions. On the first screenshot two of the &quot;leaders&quot; of the alt right have MAGA hats on, twitter could have just came out openly and said it didn&#x27;t want Trump supporters on their platform.

Has the other shoe dropped yet? Having gone after the figureheads, who&#x27;s next? Their followers? Smells like the beginnings of a witch hunt.